Review: An Abundance of Katherines

This book is pretty cool.

It's about a guy called Colin: he just finished high school, he's a prodigy (but not a genius), a bit of a geek and he's dated 19 girls. All named Katherine. When the nineteenth Katherine breaks up with Colin he's pretty devastated, so his best friend Hassan decides they should go on a road trip to cheer him up. They end up in Gunshot Tennessee, and without giving away the plot or anything, both end up working through some stuff, and leave the town feeling better about life and love. Anyone will be able to relate to Colin's struggles in this book. He's trying to figure out his place in the world.

The characters are real. The boys are sensitive and complicated and tough and they cry and they want to be loved. The girls are sensitive and complicated and tough and they cry and they want to be loved.

The story was pretty good if a tiny bit generic. The details were what made it for me. Like where Colin is sad, he's not just sad. He's laying face down on the carpet unable to move. Or when Hassan changes some picnic table graffiti from GOD HATES FAG  to GOD HATES BAGUETTES. Or the footnote that told me that Nikola Telsa once wrote “I loved that pigeon. I loved her as a man loves a women”.

This book is nerdy. If you geek out over words (Colin anagrams constantly), languages (Colin speaks a ton of languages and thinks about their differences), footnotes (82 of them, and they're interesting), maths (Colin comes up with a formula which accounts for the length of each of his relationship with each of the Katherines), or random facts (Colin's a prodigy; he knows a lot of stuff), you're going to enjoy this book.

On the whole this book was a really good time. For me, this wasn't a deep read. I heard similar stories before. I could relate, but I wasn't sucked into Colin's struggles. But those extra details made it oh so much fun to read.

My final recommendation: definitely worth a read. ▼

Author: John Green